Discuss Your Life Thread

I came home yesterday because today is my mom's birthday and my dad went up to the cottage to shingle the roof, so I thought I should come home to keep her company (since my brother sucks).

We got a new TV and my brother used it last night to play video games, and didn't change the source back to satellite, so this morning when my mom went to watch TV, she couldn't figure out how to, so she shouts up the stairs to my brother to ask him how. He basically storms down the stairs, shouts at her saying she's ignorant and he won't tell her how to put it back because she needs to learn how to do it herself. They fight until I can't stand it anymore (it's her birthday) so I tell my brother he's a jerk and I go downstairs to fix it, and I can hear my mom crying in the laundry room. She then leaves the house in the freezing cold because she now feels unwelcome in her own home. On her birthday.

I picked her up and we went out for the afternoon, but I have to leave tonight and I feel really bad about it. :(

My brother sucks.

I never understood how people could disrespect their parents like that. Me and my brothers have the mouths of sailors and some of the most inapropriate stuff comes out of our mouths but when it comes to our parents it was always respect. I always was confused when I was younger and saw friends yelling at their parents, just seemed backwards.

I never understood how people could disrespect their parents like that. Me and my brothers have the mouths of sailors and some of the most inapropriate stuff comes out of our mouths but when it comes to our parents it was always respect. I always was confused when I was younger and saw friends yelling at their parents, just seemed backwards.

I only wish my brother saw it that way. He's generally a very selfish and argumentative person, but I really wish he could respect my mom more. He just doesn't seem to get it!

Before I left with my mom for the afternoon, I said to my brother "You've made mom feel unwelcome in her own home on her birthday. I hope you feel good about that." and then as I was walking out the door I said "You had better apologize". An hour ago, he came home and apologized, but after he left I heard my mom crying again, and now she's all upset because he didn't even get her a card or anything. He is soooo thoughtless I can't stand it. >:[

I only wish my brother saw it that way. He's generally a very selfish and argumentative person, but I really wish he could respect my mom more. He just doesn't seem to get it!

Before I left with my mom for the afternoon, I said to my brother "You've made mom feel unwelcome in her own home on her birthday. I hope you feel good about that." and then as I was walking out the door I said "You had better apologize". An hour ago, he came home and apologized, but after he left I heard my mom crying again, and now she's all upset because he didn't even get her a card or anything. He is soooo thoughtless I can't

How old is your brother? Does he still stay with your parents? If so he probably wont get it till he moves on his own. While I always respected my parents I didn't realize how much they sacrificed for me till I moved out. Looking back on it I really have no clue how they did it since we grew up pretty poor, I actually make more then my parents put together now. I try to help them out as much as I can now since I figured it's the least I can do.

I'm at an odd point in life right now. I'm not currently attending college because my parents aren't paying my tuition anymore (parent's didn't think my grades were good enough for them to keep paying my way). Now all I do is work part time (around 25 hours/week) at the local Stein Mart at minimum wage, and when I'm not there I'm playing video games or watching anime in my room with the door closed (although the past couple of days I've mostly spent on the forums).

Right now, I'm just saving up some money so I can finish what I started. I haven't been as motivated with my education this past semester, so I'm hoping that after working in retail for a year straight I'll get sick of it and want to make something more of myself. I'm going to avoid loans to the best of my ability, because I figure I'd spend more years paying off a bunch of student loans than I would just saving up enough money to pay my way through.

Right now I'm considering saving up enough money to pay for 2 semesters, then going back. I'm thinking that what I might do is just take 12 credit hours per semester instead of 15 like I have been, so that way I'll have time to take on a part time job, ideally at one of the convenience stores on campus. Between the money I'd have saved up and the extra income from the part time job and my regular summer job at Stein Mart I would hopefully have enough to finish without taking out any loans. If I take 12 credit hours per semester it should take me 5 semesters to finish.

If I do have to take out a loan in the end, it likely won't need to be a huge one, so I could probably pay it off in a year or 2.

Yesterday my brother proposed to his girlfriend and she said....yes. I'm very happy for my brother and I hope everything goes well for them. Right now they are thinking about having the wedding sometime next year. It was a pretty big shock for me when I first heard he was going to propose to her. It's hard for me to believe that he's actually going to get married. Heck it's even hard for me to believe that I am now in college. We're both growing up, but at the same time it still feels like we're still little kids. Anyways though I couldn't be happier for him as he's the best brother I could have ever asked for.

I just wish he would've waited until I turned 21 before getting married. I'm not going to get to do anything at the bachelor party. :P

Also I'm beginning to dabble in to the wonderful world of beer cellaring. I currently have a Vertical Epic, an Imperial Russian Stout, this Juxtaposition black pilsner, and a kona coffee/ macademia/ coconut porter aging right now. All those beers are made by Stone AKA like the best brewery around (Pat, if you read this go take the brewery tour since you're close, it's beer heaven). The Stone Vertical Epic has to be one of, if not THE best beer I've ever had. Anybody who likes darker/ heavier beers and is lucky enough to live near a place where Stone is sold, definitely pick some up.

I've been to beer heaven. It truely is heaven on earth. Also if you like fine SoCal beers, drink some Karl Strauss. I practically live off the stuff.

I'm gonna stick with the MechE major. The classes are hard as hell, but part of the reason I struggled with them was because I wasn't giving them my all. That led to me realizing that I was having problems in certain areas after it was too late (like after a big exam or a quiz). That's part of the whole motivation thing I mentioned.

My friends from back home came in town to celebrate two of my friend's 21st birthday this weekend. They arrived Friday night, but the party wasn't until Saturday night, so first we went to a club. We ended up waking up at around noon the next day and eating at iHop at around 3pm. Then we started preparing for the house party. It was Willy Wonka-themed, so there was a lot of candy, rice krispy treats, and a chocolate fountain. Three homosexual girls who attended got too drunk/shameless, and unfortunately I got to witness them having a threesome make-out session and scissor with their pants on. They were doing this in the "dance room" which was the garage with a blacklight and music, so we called everyone over to the room and turned on the lights to humiliate them a little. Ahh, so gross.

As I wrote previously, my cousin Kirk died last weekend after taking his own life. This was probably the single most devastating thing that has ever happened to my family. Given the acute nature of his mental illness, I don't think there was anything that anyone could have done to prevent this that they weren't doing already; all there was left for us to do was to come together to give his parents and his sister what comfort we could. I grieved especially at remembering that we were supposed to see each other again this Christmas, after a two-year separation; I had hoped that visiting us in California would in some small way alleviate the depression that was causing him to suffer, and that almost took him from us earlier this year.

At the airport in Phoenix on Wednesday (one of the stops on my hastily-arranged journey to Missouri), I was watching CNN or something, and Warren Buffett was being interviewed on TV. I couldn't help but think of Kirk then; when he was about ten years old, he was precociously obsessed with (and knowledgeable about) investment and finance, and was one of what was probably a very small number of ten-year-olds who actually knew who Warren Buffett was. One of the most celebrated photographs in the extended family photo album is of ten-year-old Kirk shaking the Oracle of Omaha's hand, and having him sign a dollar bill. I don't have any idea what Buffett was talking about, because all I could think of was that story.

I flew to Kansas City and met up with my dad, my sister, my grandma, and several of my aunts. We drove to Columbia, were Kirk had been living and taking graduate courses at the University of Missouri, his (and his parents') alma mater. We met Kirk's family (Aunt Jamie, Uncle Steve, and my cousin Lindsay) at his other grandmother's home, along with my Aunt Judy and Uncle Rob; they lost their son, my cousin Joe, in an accident several years ago. (I should clarify, my dad has five sisters and one brother; the sisters were all there, but the brother was not, being largely incapable of travel for various medical reasons). Another of Kirk's cousins from his dad's side of the family, whom I'd never met, was also there. That night we mainly spent catching up, and expressing our condolences. Then we went to our hotel.

The funeral was the next day. I'd been to two funerals before, both for family members: one for Joe, and one for my Grandpa. I'd never seen or felt anything like this, however. Joe had survived a year and a half or so after his accident, in a vegetative state, and Grandpa had been declining with a severe case of dementia for years, so while their passings had been sad for everyone, we'd had time to prepare. Losing Kirk under such awful and sudden circumstances was almost more than most of us could bear, and it broke my heart to see the visibly emotional effect the day was having on his family. I felt sick to my stomach in a way that hasn't really gone away since.

Judy gave the eulogy; she happens to be an ordained minister, and thus a "professional" at this sort of thing, and of course she understood the pain of their loss more than any of us could. The local minister's words were a little controversial; I won't go into the details, but suicide is obviously a difficult subject to talk about and satisfy the emotional needs of all present (the potential irony here is that Kirk was basically an atheist). We had a reception afterward with all the guests, most of whom I did not know, but I suppose that's to be expected. After that, we had some time set aside for us to share some stories as a family. I didn't offer up anything especially substantial then, because I have some difficulty expressing my emotions like that. But the stories that were shared did seem to provide some comfort.

After the funeral, Uncle Steve, Lindsay, and my sister and I went out to Kirk's favorite bar and pizza joint to meet with some of his friends. The place was packed with them, and just about all of them were very close to him, and willing to share some stories of the kind that aren't exactly appropriate for the walls of a church. My favorite one of these concerned one of his trips to Ireland; apparently, he had been attending a Scroobius Pip vs Dan Le Sac concert (he was apparently a huge Scroobius Pip fan), and in a drunken haze, tried to hitch a ride with the band to the next city. There were lots of stories like that; zany misadventures and hijinx, mostly (and mostly not fit for repeating here, now that I think about it).

One moment that hit me really hard was entirely coincidental. When I don't know what I want to drink at a bar, I usually order a whisky and coke. One of his friends came up and asked what I was drinking; when I told him, he said "you must know Kirk, he ordered those all the time." I really didn't know how to answer that, since I hadn't meant that particular homage intentionally. And I didn't know how that comment made me feel, but I know it made a heavy impact on my mind. We continued the event at another of his favorite bars, an Irish pub that had unfortunately been invaded by obnoxious rugby players (and their girlfriends, I guess), who spent at least half an hour standing in a big circle drinking from a shoe and chanting inane, repetitive, and obscene things in some highly ritualized fashion. We did our best to drown them out with Flogging Molly on the jukebox.

On Friday we all drove to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Lake of the Ozarks, one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in America (and probably the classiest place in the whole state of Missouri). Under other circumstances, it could have been a lovely family reunion, but of course, it was what it was, and we all tried to help with the emotional burden as best as we could. I spent the night in Kirk's old room, which was still preserved as it was when he'd last stayed in it. The dollar bill signed by Warren Buffett was still on the wall, framed with the famous photograph. And there was his book shelf full of weighty tomes of philosophy and history, and many books I'd heard of but never read.

Saying goodbye to Jamie and Steve and Lindsay on Saturday was incredibly difficult, and as our car pulled away for the drive back to Kansas City I felt so sick to my stomach I thought I might lose it. I still can't believe I'll never see Kirk again. He was an unbelievably brilliant, intelligent person; he graduated from MU last year with degrees in English and Philosophy, magna *** laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Before everything went so terribly wrong, we all believed that he could do anything. I admired him so much; now, I've got to try to live in a way to live that honors him and his memory.

Thank you to everyone who expressed their condolences, and thank you also for indulging me in my incredibly long story. So much happened this week, I just had to put it all down some how.

Dav, just be really strong. You might not know most of us here personally, but if you need someone to talk to, I know that a lot of us would be more than willing to help you in any way we can.

One of my classmates took his own life as well about two weeks ago. I never really spoke to him, but I had a class with him a couple of years ago and would always see him around school. It was still such a shock to hear the news, and it was particularly eery to see his Facebook statuses that he posted just the night before (perhaps moments before) he took his life. If you were to read them you would probably think how obvious it was that he would do that, because the most recent ones really suggested it. But even though I didn't know him that well, I still felt for my other friends who were expressing their sorrows.

You're never alone here bro. A lot of people have had similar experiences. I had a good friend of mine in high school took his own life. I still remember the emotions that I went through in the aftermath. So, just realize that we're all here for you if you need anyone to talk to.